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EmmaMaree.com

Scottish Writer of Fantasy & Sci-Fi

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I Aten’t Dead

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It’s Writing Wednesday! Back in black (and white). HALF AN HOUR TO GO UNTIL IT’S NO LONGER WEDNESDAY, CAN I GET THIS POST OUT IN TIME?

(You bet I can!)

What I’m Writing

Still continuing, slowly, with my rewrites. My goal a fortnight ago was….

1. Get to 70% by the next weekly update.

Honestly, even with an extra week I missed the mark and only hit 65%. But we’re into a new week and a whole new month, with fire at my heels, so I’m setting a brand new goal for next week:

1. Get to at least 80% by the next weekly update.

2. Get those 155 pages rewritten and shiny, or at least, shinier than they currently are.

3. Send it to the awesome betas.

4. Celebrate being one step closer to querying, and then…

5. Work on a shiny new project!

It’s been a really mad month, all things considered — writing progress has been a bit unsteady, but it’s still been moving forward, and for someone that’s only been driving for a month I’ve had a LOT of car adventures and road trips (plus an unexpected week of being sick as a dog).

Let’s hope for a September of kick-butt writing action.

What I’m Reading

Okay, so, confession time for the To-Be-Read pile decimation challenge.

I’ve been doing it. I’ve done pretty well, actually, with 6 books read in August, bringing me closer to caught-up with my yearly goal to read. But I’ve also… been buying books.

This month I picked up RAGING STAR (to finish the Dustlands trilogy), THE SHEPHERD’S CROWN (the last Terry Pratchett book! I had to!) and the gorgeous Waterstones exclusive of Patrick Ness’s latest book, THE REST OF US JUST LIVE HERE.

  So yeah, my TBR Decimation has been… somewhat ineffective this month. But totally worth it. THE SHEPHERD’S CROWN was my highlight of the month, an absolutely heartbreaking read in a lot of ways but still loaded with Pratchett’s signature humour and social satire.

I really miss Sir Terry. I always will. But he left an absolutely amazing legacy of work behind him, and I’m so glad to be able to experience the Discworld.

For September, I have some pretty big beta reading projects to get through so reading is going to slow down for a wee while.

What Else I’ve Been Up To

After a rough August of chest colds and grumpiness, my health’s back on the up and up, and I’m carving out a balance between work, writing and relaxing. It’s not always an even balance, today especially, but life would be boring if it always went as planned! I’ve been messing around with the site layout a bit. It’s still not 100% what I was going for, but it’s a change, and that’ll do for now. I also took a look at my art progress through the year, which has been remarkably steady, which is always nice to see. But it’s scary to see how little of the year is left!

Chuck Wendig had a great post with advice for rookie writers, including a great demonstration of common dialogue punctuation mistakes.

Lastly, I’ve been playing video games. Because, of course, when time is a rare luxury, I’ve been playing on my dusty, well-worn old PS2 console. It was only one night, and it was a ton of fun, so I’m hoping to fit in some more relaxing gaming evenings soon.

So that’s it for just now — I’ve got work to be doing! I’ll be back soon enough, but until then, I hope everyone’s projects go awesomely and everyone has a great week.