Oy, I'm so late in posting this, I know!
So a follow-up to Miss Snark's March secret agent contest. Overall, it was a great contest last month - and I'm happy to say my results were much better than my sad attempt with the pitch fest over at WriteOnCon, prior to that!
I was oh so excited to see I was one of five winners (out of 50 entries) selected by Ms. Hannah Bowman of Liza Dawson Associates!
Hannah left a great comment, right off the bat - and it had been just what I needed. And while I'll take all the comments from the other participants / readers with a grain of salt (sometimes I wonder what people are thinking when they comment???), I'm just glad to be back out there, at least trying. You can read about all of the winners, here. And of course, if anything comes of my submit to Hannah, you all will be the first to know.
In other news? Well, I did another pass-through on my manuscript, THE LUCKY FEW. When I left it with Mr. Agent Man, my word count had skyrocketed - something he had reassured me, would not be a problem - because getting the story right was important. But then, well, we parted ways, and here I was with a MS that had bloomed in size. Yikes.
So before I started querying, I dug my heels in and started slowly hacking away. And before I knew it, I had cut several thousand words.
Which still didn't feel good enough and so I went back at it again last week. And this time, I was able to cut almost 5k more. And I think it's definitely a lot tighter. And I'm happy with where it is. But will I leave it alone? Who knows. There will always be room for improvement.
Aside from all the contests and revisions I've been doing, I also got myself back into running. It's been awhile - for various reasons - but I've missed it so.
Don't let me mislead you - for the most part, I've always said I was allergic to working out...I'm a Taurus for cryin' out loud and definitely not like some of my uber runner friends that chug out more miles than I put on my car each week. But something about running has always made it one of my favorite forms of *cough* exercise.
So, I set a personal goal that I would start running one "marathon" a week - and to do that, that means 5.5 miles every day, Monday - Friday (yes, that's technically a tad more than 26.2 miles, but it's a nice round number to target). And today wraps up my third week - which makes 3 marathons I've run - and I couldn't be happier!
And just like with writing and the importance of having fabulous CP's, I have an amazing workout partner that encourages me to show up every day and get at it. And without her motivation, I'm not sure if this would happen. But now I have someone I can't let down, cheering me on - so it does make it that much easier. And I'll take it.
And even though 2013 didn't start off great - believe me, when they say bad things happen in 3's, well, I've had enough in just the last 4 months to cover the next 3 years - it's definitely turning around. My writing is going well, the contests I've entered have been fun, and I'm back out pounding the pavement - both figuratively and literally. And that's all good news, in my book.
