Wow! Looks like you have your work cut out for you! I hope you'll be able to write and finish everything on time! I'll be praying for you!
And I completely agree with you about ideas! When I first started writing a few days ago. I had only one character and a few vague, hazy thoughts. Now, as I continue writing, I start getting more and more ideas, start putting pieces together, adding things, and the more I write, the more ideas come!
The only thing that sometimes can be annoying is that all this inspiration will come, say, in the middle of my English class, so i have to desperately find a notebook somewhere and write them down, (or trust my memory ) to write them in my story at a later time.

Nice to see you around here, Narnian_Archer! That kind of sword-fighting sounds very interesting. I would like to learn that. I really like your story idea, too!

Does the fact that the publishers are typesetting mean that Lighthouse has gotten back to you with their edits, Fencer, or does Lighthouse even do substantial edits. Perhaps they only proof-read?

Haha, I've been doing so much writing, that I've been to busy to visit the writing thread! But I haven't had much time for anything, lately.
As you may have guessed, I'm doing NaNo. Yup, some friends convinced me, the day after it started. I'm not regretting it either, I'm having a very very fun time. 19217 words so far.
I feel very unoriginal, but thankfully, since Flam gave me the idea, I can blame her. lol, just kidding.

sweeetlilgurlie, the typesetting and editing are pretty much being done at the same time. All they are doing is what is called a 'light edit', where they just look for sentence structure and typos. There will not be any content changes. But one thing many people don't realize is that when a publisher has your work, yours isn't the only one they are working on. My book is longer than most at 118k so I have to give them extra time leniency.

They have not given me back the edits yet but it should be any time now. I don't expect there to be any changes I will dislike but if there were any other content changes, I would need to wary about it. That is one of the things to be mindful of with publishers and editing. They may put something in there you don't want if it will help it sell. I don't believe Lighthouse would do that, but I have to be aware of that possibility. To my knowledge however, all that needs to be done afterwards is book cover design, getting the ISBN established and getting it set up with Amazon. I still anticipate a pre-Christmas release date.

It's been about a week, so I am bumping this thread up.

I've got two things going on now. One is a book update. Lighthouse has indicated they expect to give me what I need to review before Thanksgiving. They also expect the Amazon price to be about $14.95 in paperback. The book will be about 400 pages plus change, so that explains the cost difference from typical $9.95 for paperback books. So it is getting so close.

The other thing is that I am essentially set to start the revision of my sequel. My first draft was decent, but I need it to go a different direction than it did. I had to take a break from it a while back and then in transformed from a somewhat character-driven plot to an action-driven plot and I don't want that. I want the sequel to be more focused on character than action. I only have 5-6 action scenes, most of which are at the very beginning and at the very end. My first one has about 10 big actions scenes and that is due to the nature of the story I am telling. I expect to start that this weekend, depending on what my homework allows me to. I want to finish it before my Spring semester begins in mid-January.

congrats Fencer, I'm glad things are going well with your book
I finally finished writing that story that I have come to absolutly hate. Narnian_Archer and I are going to edit it a bit and then it will be completetly done. Now I can start on the next one . My sisters are constantly bugging me about all my stories and how I am not writing them down fast enough. The problem is for me to think up a story is like eating cake, while actually writing it down is a bit more difficult. I type slower than I think and I get frustuated easily that I am not writing fast enough. Ideas for storys come to me all the time, I have 29 stories in my head right now, some of them completely finished, some of them still need to be worked on, and some of them are just ideas forming. I remember them all perfectly though, and know and remember each of my characters. Anyway I have my work cut out for me for the next couple of years . The story that I have finished writing is 101 pages long and has 94,607 words, after we edit it it might have a bit less, a short story and when I first made it up I loved it, now I hate it. Once I finish editing it I will never look at it again . It came out just a bit more girly than I like, but then I am a girl so I probably couldn't expect anything more

Just as expected, I got the edited version back from Lighthouse on Wednesday. And since, I have gone through the entire manuscript and caught 10 final errors to fix. Not bad for a book typeset at 425 pages. I am going to submit the needed changes and then it is almost done. While I am home with my parents for Thanksgiving, I am going to get a picture of me to include, since they have a digital camera and I do not. I have submitted some ideas for cover design and a friend of mine is also working on something. I plan to use her for first draft while Lighthouse' artists would do the actual art. That and finalizing author bio info would be all that's left from what I can tell. I expect a release date could be possible to be set in 2-3 weeks. I am so close I can taste it.

Well, I make my return to this thread after spending November writing my NaNo. For NaNo, decided to write the sequel to the novel I'm working on now, since I had the storyline plotted out for a long time already. I ended up winning with 60,088 words, but my story is only about half finished!

Something I've learned from this experience is how much I can actually write if I put my mind to it. I wrote more in one month that I probably would have written in five or six, otherwise. Basically, I've been pretty lazy. So I've decided it's time to up the pace. I'm going back to editing my work-in-progress, but if I run out of steam, and/or feel my creativity slowly draining away, I'll go back to that sequel and see if it helps.

Congrats, Fencer! I'm glad your editing went well! Ten final errors in 425 pages? That's really amazing! If I ever got to that point, I'd probably still want to fiddle with everything until the last possible moment - I'm a perfectionist, and I'm hardly ever satisfied with my work. If I ever am published, I'm afraid I'll go scanning though all my books, wanting to change what I wrote but being unable to do so!

I'm so excited to find this thread! I have only been able to read through a few pages and already have learned a ton.

I guess an introduction is in order. Hello, my name is Tiffany and I've been over-writing for about 6 years. But through NaNo and my wonderful, encouraging family I am learning to control my urges and confine myself so that what I write actually makes sense.....

Haha, only part of that's true. My name is Tiffany. I always thought my sister was the writer of the family because my parents would rave about the stories she wrote.

Then I took the class that changed my life: Scriptwriting. I discovered I could write and write well in that genre. Well, I wrote almost constantly (between finishing school and working as a teacher) for the next 5 years, but nothing made it to an end, or at least a satisfactory end.

Then I did my first Scriptfrenzy and won! Sadly, I can no longer sign into the site I was housing my script on and so no longer have it, but the important thing was that I won! And on top of that, it made sense!

Then I heard about this thing called NaNo. I tried to get my sister to do it since she was the novel writing one in the family. She declined on the premise that she couldn't plan her wedding and do NaNo (which is probably quite true as she made her gown, her three bridesmaid's gowns, the flowers out of crepe paper, designed her own invitations, and printed her own programs). So I decided to be crazy and join.

Well, the long and the short of it is, I won. And again, the story made sense! I was as in love with it at the end of November as I was on November 1st. It actually pushed me into watercolour as I felt I had to get my character on paper. And it inspired a sequel for this year's NaNo (although I didn't win) and a series of children's books using the same characters and based on Proverbs. I am in the process of getting the final proof of the original story read before putting it on Create Space.

Since then, I've decided on my story idea for Script Frenzy and plan to spend the next 4 months planning and plotting for Screnzy (and moving to New Zealand, and welcoming my sister's first baby).

Anyhoo, that's me in a nut shell (although I think it must be a rather large nut).

I look forward to getting to know everyone, and learning from y'all!

Tiffany

Welcome!
I don't have time to write right now because of final exams, but I want to get some done during Christmas break.

I am on Finals as well. I'm actually not worried about them. Certainly not as much as my Software Engineering presentation I gave yesterday.

But I'll be announcing big news in the next couple days. I'm expecting a release date to be set or close to it tomorrow or Tuesday. I really want my book to be out before Christmas and I'm going to find out a bunch more shortly. In the meantime I am getting myself re-set up to get back to my sequel. I've had to set it aside for the last couple weeks due to Software Engineering, but I want to get on it big time this week and into next week.

I did submit five poems to the college magazine. I don't know whether they'll get in it or not. They are:
Stranger. Written from the perspective of a character in one of my stories, about his distant relationship with his father. I think it is one of my best poems to date.
Until You Learn to Love Again. A poem from the POV of a girl whose lover has just come home traumatized from a war. Inspired by Lloyd Alexander's The Kestrel (2nd in the Westmark trilogy)
How Long?. A lament for how long a war is going on, but a promise of friendship and love while it does. Inspired by Lloyd Alexander's The Beggar Queen (3rd in the Westmark trilogy).
More Than Just Beautiful. From the POV of the princess in my current Work in Progress, about her unwanted lover who only cares for her beauty.
Monster. From the POV of one of my best villains, as he's about to kill himself, expressing his regrets for what he had become.
I don't know whether any of these will get in, but I hope so!

I finally got some writing done yesterday on part of story that's been rattling around in my head for I don't know how long.
But it was supposed to be a bittersweet goodbye scene, but somehow..... it ended up completely different and with the main character dead at the end of it O.o

Welcome to Writer's World Tiffany! It's always fun to meet other writers. I'm Silver. Glad you've found this thread helpful, and hope to see you around here!

Interesting poems, Lady Haleth! You know, I've never really been a poetry writer, but now, all of a sudden, I have the urge to write a few - about my characters, that is. Hope yours make it into the magazine!

Brisa, isn't it funny how stories change like that? You can steer your characters as hard as you can in one direction, but if they really want to do something completely opposite, sometimes you've just got to give in and let them win. The story usually ends up better, anyway. I feel like the story I'm writing is really my characters' story, and I'm just along for the ride.

Now, though, the death scene I wrote seems incredibly wrong and cheesy, so I'm going to re-write it. I only have a vague idea of where on earth the story will go after this....