What's your 2009 writing plan? Poll.

As this year ends, I'm looking forward to my upcoming writing year, and I wondered about what yours has in store for you. Mine's gonna be busy.

First there's the marketing of my writing book, Jump-start Your Novel with Kitty-cats in Action. There are a few more blurbs that I hope will come in, then I plan to print a bunch and let you know about it.

On the writing side, I've a bunch of rewriting ahead of me. My speculative thriller, We the Enemy, is undergoing major surgery thanks to the input of editor Lou Aronica. I've worked out all the plot changes, solved the logic problems he had, and done serious character removal -- took out two key players. Now comes the rewriting. I've managed to pick away and take care of the first half, but next week will be all rewrite all the time, thanks to taking time off from the day job. I'm really looking forward to finding out how I'm going to pull it all together.

Next on the rewrite list is my satire/urban fantasy, The Vampire Kitty-cat Chronicles (no, I'm not obsessed with kitty-cats, their continuing presence in my books is purely coincidence). My queries a year ago got several agents to request fulls, and they all loved the writing. But the story didn't quite get them there. Also, I queried an editor at a publishing company who was interested because of the nature of the query -- it was written by my protagonist, Patch, the kitty-cat in the book -- but said that, at just under 70,000 words, it was too short to be a commercial novel. It's been sitting long enough now that I hope to be objective enough to see the story shortcomings and fix them.

And a third novel is going to get a long second look. I posted the opening of Finding Magic here a while back for feedback, and then got involved with returning the primary protagonist's narrative to first-person. I liked the result, but it causes a key logic problem that I need to solve. If I can, it'll go to market next year.

So what are you going to be writing? I'd love to hear specifics in the Comments section, but at the least take a moment and choose a choice or two in the poll below.

Here's wishing you a hugely successful writing year. Flogging will continue next week.

Best,

Ray

Comments

[Kami]

Gee, Ray, your pile looks even bigger than mine! I've got about six novels, a non-fiction book and some short stories in various stages, and I'll be working on writing close to full time as well as looking for an agent.

Good luck everyone!

[Sarah Jensen]

Good luck Ray and everyone else, here's to a great year for us all!

I'm querying my first novel, editing two others, and writing four more. Lucky I can do it full time. Well, part time, I do have children and a husband that require my attention on occasion. ;)

I'm hoping to take a writing class again, since it's been over fifteen years, and I also buying Kitty-cats in Action. From what I read, it sounds wonderful. Very helpful!

[Sheila]

Right now I'm rewriting a novel I finished in November, but I voted "other" because mostly I'd like to work on improving my writing. I've learned a lot here, based on your edits and the comments. So, thank you for that and all my best for 2009!