I have a writing buddy!!

I am so glad I married into this family. You have no idea how grateful I am that of all the people I could pick to marry, I picked one with a fabulous mother-in-law. We have always talked to each other about creativity, since she is an artist and I am not. She helped me improve my sketching, and mentioned that she used to write little stories. I encouraged her to work on those stories.

When I told her about my friday nights in California, she offered to write with me here in Washington. Our first writing session was today!

We didn’t go anywhere special. We went to a Safeway store nearby and hung out at the tables next to their deli. We each got ourselves something to drink, settled down with a notebook, and wrote.

I have a confession to make. I did not work on Life of a Suburban Unicorn. I wrote a short story for the first time in two years. It felt real good. I wrote it all the way to the end, expanded on it in a few notes on deepening it, and then closed the notebook with no plans to look at the story again. I’m sure I will some day, but for now it’s okay to leave it where it’s at. In my notebook.

I guess writing that short must have triggered some memories, because I came home write away and started submitting a short story I’ve had hanging around for ages. I take it out and read it sometimes because I love it so much. I change a word or two. I put it away. Now it’s time to send it out there and see if someone else loves it. Cross your fingers.

If it succeeds, it will be my first publication under the name A.M. Kuska, and my first published story in WA. Wish me the best of luck!

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Author Update

The first third of my novel is officially FINISHED!!! I have edited and corrected and perfected all the way up to Elizabeth’s discovery of unicorns. I even managed to get just a little bit farther! The meeting of Joseph Thunderhead can finally be written! WOOOO!!!!

Now she’s still bopping back and forth on whether she believes in unicorns 100%, but that won’t come until she actually sees a single-horned beast standing before her. That’ll be about mid-book. ^^

The middle of the book consists of her stay in a unicorn boot camp, and should be fun and exciting to write. I’m hoping for smooth sailing from here on out!

Author Update

 If Life of a Suburban Unicorn was a short story, I’d put it away for a few years and not look at it until I couldn’t even remember writing it.

I’m so freaking bored of this manuscript, and I don’t want to write on it anymore. I’ve made it all the way to chapter five in my edits, and I want to throw up every time I look at the endless see of rough words ahead of me. It’s not that I don’t love my manuscript. I do. It’s not that I don’t love writing. I do. But for the past three days all I’ve done is write and work at the real job. I don’t want to do it anymore. I want something new, something fresh, something entertaining.

Someone rescue me from this world I’ve trapped myself in. x.x

Author Update

I am officially one third of the way through my almost-final edit of my novel, Life of a Suburban Unicorn. Chapter five is about to culminate with Elizabeth discovering the truth about unicorns, and I find myself continously rewriting it. The problem? I’m trying to deal with uni-corny-ness.

Mention the word unicorn anywhere about anything and your credibility automatically goes down a peg or two. I know the second the word “unicorn” pops up in my story people are going to start thinking of Zev as a poofy white creature with a rainbow tail.

I need edgy. I need wild. I need you to take me seriously, dang it!

Author Update

Life of a Suburban Unicorn, my current work in progress, is almost done. Unlike Rex Stoute, my writing doesn’t come out good the first draft, or even first several drafts. I start out with incoherent, upgrade to sensible but bad, and comb through it 476 times looking for errors before I call it done. By this time I hate it with a passion, and put it away until it has been so long since I’ve looked at it, I don’t even remember writing it. When I reread it, I’m amazed at the sheer beauty of the writing inside, and can’t imagine why I didn’t rush out immediately and try to publish it.

I believe I’m on the 475th revision, mostly due to this live journal page here. If you’ve read Twilight, you’ll enjoy reading the sporking of the book, and others in the series. Yes, even if you liked Twilight. In fact, you might get more out of it.

I’ve never read the rest of the series, mostly because I got New Moon and put it down unread after the first three chapters. I loved Twilight however, so when my friend sent me the Sporking of Twilight, I went in prepared to defend it to the death.

I also realized, after reading it and comparing the observations of the critic to my copy of Twilight…well…it’s accurate. All these flaws really are in this best selling novel. I pictured my own novel being ripped apart in the same way, hustled over to my manuscript, popped it open, and started asking questions. Would this person really say that? What’s really going on here? Is this accurate?

So far I’ve only double checked two chapters of my novel, but I can see the improvements already. I can’t wait to get to the juicy stuff.

That’s it for now. Tomorrow: Query letters!