*Gulp* The wait begins...

Another goal to cross off my list. I have just sent my requested partial to HM&B.

It was much harder hitting 'send' then I thought it would be. It's so final, you can't change anything, no more tweaking, analysing a word, poring over the thesaurus for something better. But I needed to pull my head out of the sand, get a bit of courage and send it on its way.

Maybe Santa will be kind? All I want for Christmas...

And for now, while I wait, I'll take a leaf out of the Energizer Bunny's book and just 'keep going'.

My Blog's 1st Birthday

I can't believe it. It's been a whole year since I started my blog.

When I started I didn't really have a goal, but after I did Susan Meier's goal setting workshops I decided I would blog once a week on my writing experiences and how I was meeting my goals.

I haven't done too badly, having blogged 51 times already this year. Some weeks slide by without a posting, while for others I keep my blog quite busy.

So how are my goals going? Well, I can tick the boxes for the following:
- enter First Kiss competition
- enter Valerie Parv Awards
- attend RWA conference
- pitch at conference
- enter High 5 competition

It's very rewarding knowing I met my goals for the first 9 months of the year.

The last few months of the year are a different story. I was lucky enough to have a successful pitch, and get a request for a partial - with the added requirement of starting the story further on. So my focus has been on rewriting and editing my submission, getting it to shine. So it's not so much I won't meet my goals, more the goal posts have just shifted


So this is my new list for the downhill run to Christmas:
- enter Emerald competition
- submit partial to Mills and Boon

I can't wait to see what the next year brings - and don't worry, you'll read all about it on my blog.

Conference Pitch... or Not

Finish writing my M&B Sweet and pitch it at the RWAust August conference. Goal #1.

One of my two writing goals for the year. For those of you who have been following my blog you might remember I have 2 major goals for 2009 - plus 8 other goals that are really a mini-action plan to help me achieve my 2 big goals.

But, a spanner in the works. Harlequin aren't actually attending RWAust's annual conference (a scenario that hadn't even occurred to me, duh). This makes it hard to meet my first goal. Or does it?

Well, the fabulous organising committee for the conference is trying to organise to get our mss in front of an editor for assessment. Gulp. With no details what does this mean? And will I need to have my ms ready before August? I have a mental timetable to have my ms polished in time... and of course the timeline fits in with the August conference.

So. This is how I've decided to look at it. If my ms gets assessed by an editor, I've still achieved essentially what pitching would have achieved. With no pitch to stress over in August, I can kick up my heels from the get go and truly enjoy my first conference.

There is always a silver lining.

Word Counts

50,000 words.

That is my goal. 50,000 words. My work in progress is aimed at Harlequin Mills and Boon Sweet so the size of my ms is already determined.

But how do I tell just how many words I've written?

I know there are two different ways of calculating word count.
1. The actual word count
2. The number of pages x 250 (when your page is set up to hold 25 lines).

Originally I'd been following the first method. But then I heard on the grapevine that publishers were more concerned with the number of pages in a book, so I switched to option 2.

Last night I celebrated breaking the 20,000 mark. But then I was told that Harlequin tend to just want the actual word count these days, back to 18,000. Bang. Just like that.

So how am I supposed to count my words?