My “Writing Plan of Action – Revised June 15, 2015” sort of fell through the cracks. In fact, I soon forgot all about it! In my own defense, we remodeled our kitchen last summer. If you’ve ever lived through a kitchen remodeling project, you will remember how all-consuming that is.

Refresher on June 2015 Plan

Something reminded me on Monday that I had a writing plan. I was shocked to read that my last revision to it was made more than 14 months ago. In a nutshell, here is that old plan: Schedule book signings/author events; blog every five days or so; look for writing contests to enter or magazine articles to write; edit my historical novel manuscript (The Spanish Coin) one day every week; and start in earnest to find a literary agent.

I have failed on all counts.

Progress made on novel manuscript

I recently got back to work on The Spanish Coin after a strange year with many distractions.

Sometimes I think I read too many “How To” books about writing and don’t spend enough time writing. For instance, I read a recommendation that my characters’ thoughts should be italicized. After going back through the first 15 chapters doing that, I read a more convincing recommendation that thoughts should be blended into a novel through characters’ voices. The reasoning was that italics pull the reader out of the story. I went back through chapters 1 through 15 and converted the italicized thoughts into a more blended format. Then, I converted thoughts in chapters 16 through 20 from “she thought/he thought” to a blended format. I hope I got it right!

My Writing Plan of Action – Revised August 25, 2016

• Hire a professional to evaluate my The Spanish Coin manuscript;
• Edit manuscript in light of that evaluation;
• Continue to blog every Friday;
• Get back to work on a sequel to The Spanish Coin (tentatively titled The Banjo); and
• Seek representation by a literary agent or self-publish.

Let’s hope I am more successful following my new plan than I was my old one!

Janet