( continues...)

Challenge # 53: One Year

Challenge # 54: discovery

Challenge # 55: cliches

Challenge # 56: home + Look At Me photos

Challenge # 57: deliberately poor writing

Challenge # 58: shadow

Challenge # 59: the ways we communicate without words

Challenge # 60: Look At Me photos

Challenge # 61: two people in a small space, in a specific genre

Challenge # 62: the air we breathe

Challenge # 63: meat

Challenge # 64: trust

Challenge # 65: blood

Challenge # 66: driving

Challenge # 67: fire

Challenge # 68: cooking

Challenge # 69: green

Challenge # 70: currency

Challenge # 71: The Other Side

Challenge # 72: dancing

Challenge # 73: rain

Challenge # 74: Look At Me photos

Challenge # 75: cave

Challenge # 76: strike

Challenge # 77: behind the door(s)

Challenge # 78: two people are sitting at a table, opposite each other

Challenge # 79: never say "never"

Challenge # 80: Out of the Closet

Challenge # 81: masks

Challenge # 82: trick[s] and/or treat[s]

(continued...)

( continues...)

Challenge # 83: little gods

Challenge # 84: lost in translation

Challenge # 85: pose

Challenge # 86: lost and found

Challenge # 87: two people, running.

Challenge # 88: the last thing you touched

Challenge # 89: ice

Challenge # 90: returns

Challenge # 91: standing in a doorway

Challenge # 92: When Homonyms Run Amok!!!

Challenge # 93: thank-yous for *shitty* gifts

Challenge # 94: the view outside your bedroom window

Challenge # 95: Look At Me photos

Challenge # 96: the outside reflects the inside....or does it?

Challenge # 97: camouflage

Challenge # 98: Baby, You Can Drive My Car

Challenge # 99: the perfect vacation

Challenge # 100: commemorating an event

Challenge # 101: disguise(s)

Challenge # 102: summer job(S)

Challenge # 103: In the back of your closet is a box. What's in the box?

Challenge # 104: school lunches

Challenge # 105: you would hardly recognize me

Challenge # 106: The In Crowd

Challenge # 107: describe a person/character by the contents of his/her [_______]

Challenge # 108: The Big Reveal

Challenge # 109: lies my parents told me

Challenge # 110: in the garden

( continued...)

( continues...)

Challenge # 111: comfort food

Challenge # 112: poetry

Oh my. Nilly rocks like a rocking thing. Thank you!

Probolem is, most editors (AmyLiz, paging AmyLiz, white editorial phone, please) want a proposal that's showing as much pre-organisation as possible. So the chapter headings should be there, even if they ultimately reject that for their own scheme.

Yup. You need to send something as solid as you think you can make it, so the topics should be chosen, as well as a representative sample of drabbles.

Also, in response to Erin's question about writing to length from a little ways back, it really depends on the genre. While Deb does write organically (more than most people), she also manages to hit her necessary word length. In romance, which is what Erin is writing, there are fairly strict length requirements depending on publisher and line, so you need to be able to meet that criteria.

In terms of a schedule, I have a problem with deadlines, so I *do* try to break things down in a mathy way. If I have three months to write 400 pages, I break it down to roughly twenty chapter at twenty pages each, just to roughly outline. Each can be shorter or longer depending on the scene, but it gives me something to shoot for. Then I readjust as I go. Knowing if you have enough story to fill a 400-page (or whatever-page) manuscript is something that comes with time and practice, IMO.

How much do I love my Nilly? Just, beyond love.

I'm heading out to NY in a couple of hours (the Daymond book), and while I'll have my laptop and WiFi card with me, I don't trust the Millennium to have access, so I'll likely be spotty. But please give some thought and discussion to the topics you'd like for the proposal.

Amy, I'm looking back and this floors me: Cruel Sister is my eighth published novel and it was the first time I've ever been hit with a ridiculous deadline. It wasn't ridiculous in terms of how fast I write - I neededn another 62.5 words or thereabouts on top of what I had, and not quite three months in which to do it - but ridiculous in terms of the circs surrounding that deadline. They had no business imposing it in the first place, not when they'd had the proposal on their desk for six months. Bastards. Besides, I didn't really want to be working on it. The heart and mind and creative mojo were squarely in the Kinkaids.

I got it done by dangling the carrot in front of myself: no starting the third Kinkaid until I finish the fourth Haunted Ballad. Bad writer! No London Calling! It worked, too.

I suspect everyone's going to have a trick for wrapping themselves around a deadline. Hell, the deadline for Truth, in the Middle is 1 November. No problem...

Hell, the deadline for Truth, in the Middle is 1 November. No problem...

Which I just read. Will send feedback momentarily.

Spent Friday night and all day Saturday with my writing group -- C.'s husband took her kids to Albany to a family thing, so we all slept over and drank wine and ate, and then Saturday we worked. There were quite a few breaks for chatting and eating (and laughing), but I got a lot of work done. It's amazing how motivational it can be to sit in a room together, everyone with their laptop and headphones, and just write, no distractions, no kids, no ringing phone.

Nilly is the best.

Bookmarked, Nilly, and thank you! Anthology or no, I've been wanting to go back and write drabbles for the topics as a focus exercise for myself.

Nilly!! The best organized Buffista!

Deb, yes, Tad Williams To Green Angel Tower was the 7 year book. It was the third in a trilogy. It also was so big that the mss was thicker than the OED. (I have seen photgraphic proof) and when they printed it in paperback it had to be split into two books because the binding wouldn't hold.

Nilly! You are so amazing! THANK YOU!!!

I skipped so many drabbles when I was teaching. Pfui. Ah, well -- it's not one of those things I'll be regreting on my deathbed. I will have to look back and think about the ones that really stick in my memory. After I hit my goal for today.

Write, Sprokets, write!