I've been busy writing for the past month or so, but not on a book. However, it is book-related, and I'm very excited about it.

Twice in the past few years I've given my "Nevada's Ranching History" slideshow presentation at the Nevada Reading Week Conference in Reno (http://www.nevadareadingweek.com). Most of the attendees are northern Nevada teachers and librarians. This year (February 10-11) I will be giving two presentations: the ranch history, and one for aspiring writers called "The Path to Publishing."

I'm expanding the ranch workshop to fit a longer timeslot, so I can fit in things I had to leave out to fit the other shorter timeslot. Then I have to tweak my slideshow to match. The handout includes an abstract and several ag-related pages from the Curriculum Unit of my book, The Orange Slipknot.

The writing workshop will focus on how your life experiences prepare you to be a writer and give you the raw material to get started. There is a short slideshow about how I came to write my book. Then we will discuss marketing and publishing your book, with the information summarized in a handout.

The biggest challenge is the clock--practicing and timing myself, while factoring in the possibility that things will move quicker or slower than I have estimated. I hope to get people talking; they may talk longer than I intend, or not as much, so I need to be able to adjust my presentation accordingly.

I always take my cowboy gear display--saddle, bridles, etc., and I wear my boots, chaps, spurs, hat and wildrag. My book, The Orange Slipknot, and the accompanying Curriculum Unit, will be available for sale, and I get to talk about the upcoming sequel, Starting the Colt--targeted for early 2013.

I haven't written for quite a while, but I am happy to report that the sequel to The Orange Slipknot--titled Starting the Colt--is finally in the publication process!

I did four school presentations this spring--I added some photos to my website. I have not started working on another book--my limited "book time" has been mostly spent on preparing presentation slideshows and talks, and marketing The Orange Slipknot.

Marketing is not my favorite activity but I force myself to make phone calls and send emails and faxes. It's never as bad as I think it's going to be, but I procrastinate and build it up in my mind so that I dread it. I am not a good salesman! But in today's publishing world, an author does really need to get involved in marketing.

I have received some great feedback from teachers on the curriculum unit that accompanies The Orange Slipknot. Such as, "These are JUST the kinds of questions we are looking for!"

The submission process begins! My goal was to get to this point by the end of summer, and school starts next week. I've heard back from most of my critiquers, made some revisions, and feel comfortable sending it off now. I can always make more changes later. It's funny how each critiquer made good suggestions, yet none came up with the same thing.

They say that when you send off a submission, it's time to start working on something else. Not sure that I really want to, but I will admit that I've been thinking about ideas for the next sequel. I have two scenarios in mind and am not sure yet which one I'd want to write next. One would take place the next spring, one the next summer. Naturally the spring scenario would come before the summer one, but I have more ideas for the summer one. What to do?

YEE-HAW!

Yep, I finished the sequel today! I've been so excited the last week or two, knowing how close I was, but I kept getting subbing jobs every day. I knew if I could just get a couple days to myself, I could do it. I couldn't write the last little bit in the evenings because I needed a quiet empty house to concentrate and "hear" what my characters were saying and thinking.

I've been thinking lately how funny it is that even though I know the plot and how my story will end, I don't know the details until I write them. And I don't write them until I put my characters in a situation, then watch them and listen to them--then I write it down. First you create believable characters, then you get to know them, then you put them in situations and see what happens. Sometimes they come up with the darned-est things. And sometimes I have to egg them on a little to get them going.

As I read my Bible, I see parallels to how God works. As a writer, I'm kind of playing "God." He's got a Big Plan (the plot) and various themes and sub-themes, which will work out the way He has planned, but within that plan, He gives us free will. And everything we choose ends up fitting into His Big Plan! (Unlike me, God doesn't have to wait to find out what His characters will choose to do--He already knows that, as well as the ending.)

Another thing I've been thinking about that relates to writing is working puzzles. I recently got some new bigger puzzles for my grandkids, and worked a few with them. I have always loved jigsaw puzzles, as well as crossword puzzles. I think perhaps working puzzles trains the brain to think in ways that help a writer: to look for and find seemingly unrelated things that might fit together, to foreshadow, to patiently work a little here and a little there on various themes and plot lines that will eventually converge.

So what do you think I'll do, now that I got to the end today? Do you think I'll kick back and take a break from writing? Give myself a party? Send it right off to a publisher? Start a new story? Guess again...every school kid should know the answer:

Rewrite! Edit! Polish! I'll go back to the beginning and read through (preferably out loud), looking for ways I can change passive voice to active voice. Looking for dull, overworked words that can be replaced with more interesting, active, descriptive words. Looking for awkward, wordy sentences that can be reworded or pared down. I do a little of this while writing, and while doing what rereading I've done. But if I see something I'm not satisfied with and can't think of a quick improvement, I don't let myself get bogged down there when I'd rather spend my limited time getting the whole story finished. I often just "bold" a word or sentence I want to rework so I can easily spot it later.

A writer needs to be able to separate her roles as creator and critic. Both roles are necessary, but should operate separately. First you create, then you critique your work. I do have a few people who are interested in reading and critiquing this story, providing some outside feedback. In the past I've been in critique groups, so I relied on others to point out what could be improved. I don't have one now, but hopefully I have learned enough from past groups, and from my experience working with the editor and publisher of The Orange Slipknot, that I can see my own work more objectively now and make improvements.

Publishing a book is exciting stuff, but being a writer is not necessarily glamorous. Discouragement, writer's block, and heavy-duty rewriting are problems I have tackled recently, but things are looking up.

When people ask me when the next book is coming out, I hate admitting that I never worked on it all last school year. I justified my lack of writing by claiming lack of time--instead spending my limited "writing time" on the phone selling The Orange Slipknot. The problem may have been writer's block. Or it may have been plain old laziness and procrastination. I don't want to become a slave to either TOS or the sequel; I don't want them to run my life. Even when school was out, I didn't find time to write; my summer vacation seemed gone almost before it started, between a trip to Australia to do a horsemanship clinic, time to be grandma, riding horses, yard work, and the usual summer projects. But the good news is, I am finally back in the writing mode, and my goal is to finish the sequel this school year.

I started writing the sequel shortly after finishing TOS, about 12 years or so ago. When you finish a manuscript and begin the submission process, it's time to start working on a new project, which I did. I had an idea for a sequel sketched out in a brief synopsis, and managed to write about half the story. Then I got stuck, and, not having even sold the first book yet, I didn't have enough motivation to work through the problem. I put it aside and decided that if I ever sold the first book, THEN I'd return to working on the sequel. What ended up happening was, after about 20 rejection notices on TOS, I practically gave up on writing in general. In the next few years, I got busier job-wise so writing was on the back burner, so to speak. When I finally sold TOS, it was a real challenge to find time in my life for the editing process, and later, for marketing.

I did a little work on the sequel about two years ago, but had trouble getting back into writing on a regular basis. This year I've had a change of schedule; my job as Remediation Tutor has ended. It was grant-funded, and with the state budget shortage, the grant was no longer available. I am back to substitute teaching, which gives me a day off here and there. My plan is to use those non-work days as writing days, and so far, it's working out great. I prefer to write when I have big chunks of time alone, something I just didn't have the past few years.

Before I could write any new material, I needed to reread what I had already written, and work through the part I got stuck on. I studied my synopsis to make sure I remembered where I was going with the plot, then started back at the beginning. It's amazing how much your ideas can change in 12 years--about writing, and about horses, which are at the heart of this story. My husband and I work with horses and our ideas have changed a lot over the years as we continue to improve our horsemanship. I ended up changing much of the horse content to reflect my current ideas. I also realized that one of my subplots was not going to work, so I cut out everything related to that.

Another thing that has changed quite a bit is my understanding of my target audience: middle-grade readers. The last four years I have worked with this age group, and especially with struggling readers. I have a better grasp now of the vocabulary, sentence structure, and pacing that is suitable for my audience. I realized I had written some of the story at an almost adult level, so I rewrote much of it, ruthlessly cutting out many of my precious words--something very hard for writers to do! My ability to critique myself, cut and rewrite has improved after going through the editing process during the publication of TOS.

This process got my writing juices flowing again, resulting in some new ideas that added depth to the story and more suspense to the plot. Somehow, the problem section was no longer a problem now, and new ideas for the last half of the story got me excited about plunging into my work. I believe I have close to two-thirds of the story written now, and it seems possible that I may actually finish it this school year.

I know that many writers discipline themselves to write regularly every day, but I choose to fit my writing time into my schedule as my time varies. For me, writing doesn't come first; it comes after family and job--balanced with other responsibilities, commitments and life's frequent unexpected events. That may sound like heresy to some writers, but I am not a full-time writer. I am just barely a part-time writer! I can't follow someone else's formula--I have to find what works for me.

Yes, I spent the first few weeks of my summer vacation working on the sequel to The Orange Slipknot. I got a lot done, reworking some parts, improving the last half of my synopsis which I work from, and struggling to clarify a few uncertainties in the timeline of my plot. I wish I could say it's done but I haven't touched it since.

A writer, like anyone else, must prioritize in order to make the most efficient use of time. I must accept the fact that, working in a school, I have much less time for writing projects than I did over 12 years ago when I wrote the book as a mostly stay-at-home mom. It has been very hard for me to learn to write in small chunks of time, governed by the clock. And when I must choose between marketing my book and working on the sequel, I usually choose marketing. After all, if people haven't read the book, what use is a sequel?

Many of my summer days involved several hours of Internet research for lists of phone numbers: book stores, gift stores, feed stores, and western stores, in Nevada and surrounding areas. Then several more hours were spent on phone calls. (Good thing we have unlimited long distance!) Fortunately, I also made many trips to the post office with piles of packages.

I finally got some photos of the Hadley Ranch at Carlin (Maggie Creek), which for the most part is the location I pictured in my mind for much of the story. We enjoy going to Elko on Labor Day weekend for the big stock horse show and this time I remembered my camera. Going over, the sun was in the wrong place, so we decided to try to get pictures coming home. In the afternoon there was a huge dust storm, but I got some pictures that weren't too bad. I added them to the Powerpoint slideshow I have prepared for possible use in author talks.

I haven’t blogged for awhile. Actually, I took a break from book stuff for a month or so, other than a few phone calls and emails. To tell you the truth, the book was starting to feel like my slave-driver; I felt guilty any time I was not spending my spare time on selling or thinking about the sequel to The Orange Slipknot (my summer project). I had been hitting the marketing aspect pretty hard, so I decided to just relax, do other things in my spare time, and hopefully let all those contacts bear fruit.

I enjoy reading about how the brain works; I recently read something interesting about how to increase your creativity. Work on your project for awhile, then leave it for an hour, or a few days, go do something else. Relax, do something different and enjoyable, don’t think about your project. Meanwhile, your brain will be working on solutions, and next thing you know, ideas will come to you.

My school job will turn to summer vacation in another week, and I plan to spend a good part of my summer working on the sequel. I haven’t worked on it for a few months, devoting my spare time instead to marketing. So I am now rereading what I had written; I will then leave it alone for a few days before starting to work on it. I will trust my brain to be working on it in the background, kind of like my computer is working in the background as I type, updating my anti-virus system. Hopefully when I am ready to bring up that “program” (the sequel), my brain will provide me with the updates it’s been working on. It’s worth a try, and I like this idea better than forcing myself to work on a project so hard that it seems like a chore.

Meanwhile, I have been spending more time seeing grandkids, reading, surfing the Web, playing the piano, visiting with friends on the phone, riding horses, yard work, watching TV (mostly news and horsey stuff), and chatting with my horsey Internet friends. I took a vacation from working on my book so that when my REAL vacation starts, I’ll be ready to get back to work. That’s kind of a paradox, isn’t it?

The next big push after getting out numerous press releases was to get copies of the book placed in Elko, Nevada before the big Cowboy Poetry Gathering this last week in January. I spent over a week making phone calls and emailing stores and libraries, then decided to just take a half-day and make the two-hour drive so I could make deliveries and hopefully sew up a few locations by a personal contact. This was my husband's first exposure to making book sales; I think we were both taken aback by the enthusiastic response of those I talked to. Of course, the book's Elko setting and buckaroo theme makes it a natural choice in northern Nevada. I left almost 60 books in Elko, and a third that many in Battle Mountain.

Now I can back off the heavy-duty selling a bit and have a more regular life again while the books find their way into the hands of the public. I notified the Institute of Children's Literature that one of their graduates had sold her first book, so they wrote back, requesting details. I also started putting together photos for a slide show for possible presentations--finding and selecting old pictures, scanning them onto the computer, fixing them up in Adobe Photoshop, organizing them, teaching myself how to put them into Microsoft Powerpoint which I know nothing about, and planning the talk that would accompany them. These two projects took me back through 10-15 years of memories as I retraced the steps that led to publication of my book.

And yes, I have been working on the sequel. Just as with The Orange Slipknot, much of my "writing" involves mulling over possibilities for character and plot development, so much of what I call "writing time" has nothing to do with actually adding more words to the story. I "write" while getting ready for work, while spending a half-hour every morning at crosswalk duty, while cooking, eating, cleaning house, or driving. I even work on my story when I'm awake in the night and can't get back to sleep.

The boxes of books finally arrived! Just in the nick of time for me to get the prepaid autographed copies out in the mail. One last glitch almost cost an extra day--UPS had recorded my address wrong, and the poor UPS lady spent 45 minutes going up and down my road, looking for that non-existent number, and going door-to-door trying to locate me. I thanked her profusely and offered her a tip for her efforts but she refused it.

I forced myself to wait to open the boxes until my husband got home so we could share the big moment. He took pictures of me and my boxes and books spread all over the couch, which I immediately emailed to family and close friends. Holding my book in my hands was an absolutely wonderful feeling.

What a whirlwind of activity the last few weeks have been! I think I went to the post office about 8 days in a row with book orders. Getting them out just in time for Christmas resulted in many local sales, including several stores that carried them. Hearing great comments on the book prompted me to add a "Readers Say…" page to my website. To my surprise, I found that many adults loved the book too, so I guess it's not just for kids. I sent my first press release to our local newspaper and a week later my article appeared.

By Christmas day my company was gone and I was free to work on book projects--next was more press releases. Thanks to the internet, I was able to easily find email links to newspapers in many cities. I began with Nevada, then neighboring states in the Great Basin area. I tweaked the headline and a few sentences to hopefully make it eye-catching and relevant to other locations. I also researched and worked on some other promotional ideas.

I got several good days of work in on the sequel to The Orange Slipknot. (One reader already asked when the next book would be out!) Mostly I needed to reread and rework material I had written previously, but as often happens when writing, I had a couple of serendipity moments where new ideas popped into my head. I think I may be about halfway done with it now. I would like to think that perhaps that means I could be done by the time school is out, but who knows. I am so thankful for my two-week Christmas break. It has truly been a working vacation though.

Never count your chickens before they actually hatch. Things do not always go as planned, and I'm sure this won't be the last time...the books that were supposedly "in the mail" to my publisher turned out to be not in the mail, not even printed. So then a last minute change of printer resulted in several more weeks of delay and lost opportunities to sell books at an event and on a trip, but they will actually arrive in a couple of days now.

Meanwhile, I have been distributing flyers and bookmarks and talking up my book. I've used my unplanned extra time to get over being sick, visit grandkids, make my Christmas plans, and work on another writing project. I hope to use my two-week vacation from my job at school to resume work on the sequel to The Orange Slipknot, which I haven't touched in months.

When my books arrive this week, I will spend that evening autographing and stuffing books into prepared mailers which I will take to the post office the next day. Hopefully all prepaid orders will arrive by Christmas! Then I will begin my new job of selling books. I have stores to visit and press releases to send out. I will need to devise a way to keep track of my business transactions. Writers must also become small business managers!